I strongly believe the act of reading about the lived experiences of another person has the power to alter the course and contours of our own lives. While I read more fiction on average than any other genre, when I think about the books that have had the most significant impacts on the way I think about and move through the world, it’s often memoirs doing the magic. There is no one monolithic queer experience, and reading an array of queer memoirs reveals just how varied, divergent, surprising, relatable, new, shifting, and complex queer life can be. Here, I’ve assembled some great queer and trans memoirs from the past five years that might just change your life in small or profound ways. For more memoir recommendations, check out our list of butch memoirs and our archive of memoir reviews.
Quiz: What Queer Memoir Could Change Your Life?
Related:#affiliatemarketingmemoir
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Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is the managing editor of Autostraddle and a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the assistant managing editor of TriQuarterly, and her short stories appear or are forthcoming in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more. Some of her pop culture writing can be found at The A.V. Club, Vulture, The Cut, and others. You can follow her on Twitter or Instagram and learn more about her work on her website.
Kayla has written 886 articles for us.
A+ quiz – I got recommended Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls which did indeed change my life when I read it. Great job.
I got recommended Hijab Butch Blues in my first go through, but the questions were so /rude/ and I had just a hard time choosing between the answers, I know the recommendations are going to find me where I live and wreck me, so I know I’m going to be taking the test multiple times. Wish me luck moving them off me TBR listing onto my actively reading or read list, tho…
Thanks for the recs!
I got Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Māhealani Madden and it looks good.
Hijab Butch Blues was one of my favorite books last year and it did legit change how I see the world.
The last book that I read because of an AS quiz (Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowell) was genuinely life changing.
How far the light reaches! I’ll be moving this from my TBR to reading immediately!
Also, I see others got Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls – I first heard about that book here, and i just adored it
as a Hawaiian, im proud to have received the result of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Māhealani Madden!
Mai Poina, dont forget, february 14 is Hawaiians Killed Colonizer Cook Day!